From dusk till dawn and back again, a small group of hotline staffers handle potentially high-stake calls. The voices on the other end: Long Island abuse victims reaching out for help, sometimes while in harm’s way.Such calls may soon slip into silence or become fewer as ECLI-VIBES — an Islandia-based nonprofit that staffs the hotline and serves victims of domestic violence, human trafficking and sexual assault — is one of several such organizations in New York due to see a reduction in state funding.Jennifer Hernandez, executive director of ECLI-VIBES, said the potential loss of funding amounts to a broken trust for clients who are often confronting a porous social safety net. Ms. Hernandez told NEWSDAY, “The worst thing that you can do is promise something that you can't deliver on, and we've learned that because trust is broken so much with our community, and it's like, you know, ‘Yeah, you're another person who says you're going to help me and can't?’”Tiffany Cusaac-Smith reports in NEWSDAY that the state Office of Victims Services, which doles out the money, said it received more requests for funding than it had earmarked for its two-year budget cycle that starts this year, resulting in a loss of funding for some organizations. The office also said fluctuations in federal funding from the federal Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) contributed to the cuts. For instance, the state received about $70 million from VOCA in 2025 and $43.9 million in 2024, the agency said.At ECLI-VIBES, the loss would be seismic. The organization has received $1.3 million annually from the Office of Victims Services. But in a July letter, the nonprofit found its funding would drop to about $637,000, a 50% cut.The cut, which the Office of the State Comptroller must still review, will hit the nonprofit’s direct services, including the hotline, as well as its licensed social workers and mental health counselors. The organization may have to cut seven employees if it doesn’t secure additional funding through fundraising and other avenues.Each year, the organization ends up following up on about 6,000 domestic violence reports filed with the Suffolk County police. After that, the nonprofit's client care clinicians, licensed mental health counselors or social workers do safety planning and work with shelters, hospitals and other providers. The nonprofit also manages the county’s sexual assault forensic examiner program, which sends a healthcare provider to collect scientific evidence of assaults at hospitals. Some of those areas could be affected by the financial pinch, raising concerns among Suffolk officials including Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney Suffolk Sheriff Errol D Toulon, Jr. urged the state and federal government to factor in the impact of ECLI-VIBES’ critical services and restore funding.The NYS Office of Victims Services told NEWSDAY that it never received so many applications seeking so much funding.***The Suffolk County Water Authority pumped a record amount of water to its customers in June, as 400,000 homes and businesses and thousands of acres of residential lawns, thirsty after a prolonged period of drought, sucked up more than 11 billion gallons of water that month. During that time, the water authority also came close to eclipsing its record for the most water it’s ever pumped at one given moment, which is about 550,000 gallons per minute.Michael Wright reports on 27east.com that a wetter July and early August has eased the stress on the supply infrastructure, the SCWA says, thanks largely to homeowners who have installed smart systems that use weather forecasting or soil moisture and rainfall sensors to bypass automated watering schedules when watering is not needed.“It’s been a tale of two summers for us this year,” Daniel Dubois, the SCWA’s director of communications and external affairs, said this week. “In the early season we had a widespread drought across Suffolk County and water usage was really through the roof, particularly on the East End but across our service territory, also. In June, we set a record, 11.15 billion gallons. But since then we’ve had quite a bit of rain, so we’re in a much better position now.”To keep up with the soaring demand and the stresses on its supply systems, the water authority is pouring millions of dollars into infrastructure to prop up its supply network, while still wrestling with whether to introduce a new, third tier of its pricing schedule to help shift some of the burden of its costs on those who use the most water.Among the infrastructure improvements underway is a new water storage tank currently being constructed by the SCWA in Tuckahoe, which will boost the ability to deliver huge volumes of water to Southampton Village and its surroundings during peak demand times — which is invariably the early morning hours of summer days, when thousands of residential automatic irrigation systems are churning sprinkler ...
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